The Last Days of Summer 2014 at Camp Otterbein

It's hard to believe that my fifth summer at Camp Otterbein has come to an end!

Last week was our final week with campers. In Wilderness Adventures, we had 5 guys. I called the group "Burgers and Fries". We had a great time! What an awesome way to end the summer!
We went on awesome adventures and had some great discussions throughout the week. I haven't seen a group of campers open up this year as much as these guys did.

The first day, we did our river kayaking trip. We changed up the route a bit, starting instead of ending at the whitewater kayaking site. As usual, we had a wonderful time paddling down the river. I led and Andrew, the counselor, stayed in the back lifeguarding. I know too many Andrews by the way, in case you didn't notice. Haha!

That night, we hiked into an area called The North Woods. Andrew made up a story about how we got lost in the woods and set up a great survival scenario. We then set up camp and slept out in the middle of the woods. It was a chilly night, but we had a fabulous fire going and plenty of layers. And the serenity of the forest at night is a wonderful way to fall asleep.

The next morning, we found our way back (very quickly thanks to the amazing navigational skills of the oldest camper) and had some delicious s'mores pancakes. A little later that day, we did the high course. I saw some amazing things happen up there: the boys worked together so well!

On Wednesday, we went on our rock climbing, rappelling trip. Unfortunately, a huge storm hit right when we were about to set up for the repel so we had to hike down and leave. Scott (our camp director) took us to a local place called Grandma Fay's for some delicious ice cream. That night was the last worship service and the camp tradition of Capture the Flag with all of camp. As usual, we had a blast chasing eachother around beneath the stars.

The last day came way too soon. We had a delicious double Dutch oven breakfast: Mountain Man breakfast (a casserole with eggs, meat, hashbrowns, and cheese) in one oven and fruit pizza in the other. Yum! The rest of the day we packed up, had some final discussions, and even got to swim. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we sent the campers home.

 

Monday and Tuesday of this week was staff closing, in which we worked and cleaned up by day and did fun surprise activities by night. The first night, we did a fun scavenger hunt set up by Scott's parents and ended up at a local movie theater to see Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D: great movie!  The second night we had our last dinner together, went down the zipline, and then had our closing ceremony and final communion and worship for the summer. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone: some that night and some the next morning before I left.

Readjusting to life after camp, as usual, is pretty difficult at times. I already miss my friends, the ability to change so many lives in such an amazing way, the beautiful places and adventures. Fortunately, there are plenty of amazing things coming up to look forward to: pre-wedding festivities, the wedding, and starting graduate school. My amazing summer job may be over, but big things are happening and I have so much to be grateful for!

2 Weeks of Insanity

A LOT happened during weeks 6-7 of camp! I've really slacked on posting updates. Oops!

In non-camp news, my mom came to visit a couple of weekends ago and we got a bunch of wedding stuff done! Yay! Less than 2 months!!  :-D

As far as camp goes, week 6 of camp I had a program called Wilderness Night Owls. It was a combination of the usual high adventure activities done in Wilderness Adventures and a camp that was offered years ago and has been brought back, in which you stay up progressively later throughout the week and don't have to wake up each day until noon. I found that I LOVED this sleep schedule! I've found that the 11pm bed time and 7am wakeup call has been hard to re-adapt to!

One of the days, a guest speaker came and brought snakes that we got to hold. So cool! We had great food, fun cookouts, and an exciting night time scavenger hunt.

My favorite part of that week was our night kayaking trip. The view of the river with stars, the moon, and some light fog on the hills was just breathtaking! We also heard an owl right by the river. It was pretty cold, but we stopped and made a fire during our dinner break and still had a great time!

I can't go into details, but the downside to the week was an emergency situation at the rock climbing and rappelling area we go to. It all still seems surreal. We had a very unique situation and (just like we've always planned), I was the one that ran to get help. The area is pretty remote and we had no cell phone service. I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life. Especially on hilly trails. The person involved ended up being ok, but we didn't get back to camp until about 4am and it was pretty traumatizing for everyone. On the bright side, we had a buffet of delicious leftovers and an amazing communion at 4:30 am.

Other than our emergency situation, it was a pretty good week with an amazing group of people!

Week 7, I had high expectations. It was a camp called "Explore God's World": we had trips and high adventure stuff every day. A couple of the campers were very adventurous, as expected. A group of them, though, came from inner city Columbus and didn't want to do all the activities or were really hesitant (except for a couple of them). One camper caused a lot of trouble through the week: being downright disrespectful, refusing to listen, lying to get her way, making a couple of the campers she came with very angry to the point of being switched to a different group. This situation made for a difficult week. However, we still had some amazing moments. 

The first full day, we did high ropes. Only a couple of campers sat out and the ones that did do the challenge course had a blast!

On Tuesday, we went to Sell's Park in Athens (the one park I hadn't explored much-go figure) to do some mountain biking. We were told it was a beginner trail: it was more like an intermediate trail. Though the ride was difficult, we had a great time!

On Wednesday, we did an 'extreme creek stomp' at a nearby 'metropark'. I put metropark in quotations because there is no big city near the Hocking Hills area, so I find it funny to refer to something as a metropark. We found some cool critters, mainly crawdads, and got to swim through a deeper part of the creek.

On Thursday, we went rock climbing and rappelling. Everyone had a great time!

On the last day, we went kayaking on the Hocking River. The campers did a lot better than I thought they would! They kept up quite well and we all had a blast! The downside was that since it was a Friday, the river was really busy.

Week 7 was definitely one of the more difficult weeks I've had this summer. But if I helped make a difference in the lives of any of those campers, it was all worth it.